Will the Millennium Challenge Account Be Different? [Washington Quarterly]
03/01/2003
From the Washington Quarterly
Spring 2003
In March 2002, President George W. Bush proposed establishing a Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), beginning in fiscal year 2004, that would provide substantial new foreign assistance to low-income countries that are “ruling justly, investing in their people, and encouraging economic freedom.”1 The MCA promises to bring about the most fundamental change to U.S. foreign assistance policy since President John Kennedy introduced the Peace Corps and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the early 1960s. The significance of the proposed program lies partly in its scale: the proposed $5 billion annual budget represents a 50 percent increase over the $10 billion annual foreign aid budget in FY 2002 and a near doubling in the amount of aid that focuses strictly on development objectives.